Category: HOW TO
DRAW FOR TRUTH
We draw what is right, not what seems right. We draw for truth. Panofsky tells us that there were three components of subjectivity which were codified in the Renaissance representational mindset: subjective emotions, foreshortening,...
ACRYLIC INK
The drawing above was done using acrylic ink rather than watercolors. Turns out, acrylic ink behaves nearly identically to watercolors. It applies easily with the same watercolor brush that you normally use. The washes...
MUSEUM SKETCHERS
Possibly you have heard of the organization Urban Sketchers. Urban Sketchers do what the title suggests; they sketch in urban settings. And they do it in a group. So there is a social component...
CREATION STORY
We are not taught the story of creation. As I have said before in these pages, when we are taught about famous buildings, is it a flashcard mentality. We are taught to recognize the...
TRANSPARENT PHOTOGRAPHY
In an article in Psychological Science, as reported in the Times, researchers found that taking photos serves to increase your memory of the experience. The studies found that taking photos increases your engagement with...
YOU’VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE
Picasso said, that when drawing, “You have to start somewhere. You can always erase reality later on.” That is a powerful thought, given that it applies to our continued search for the means and...
PRACTICE AND THE COMPUTER
The computer pushes some people away from the practice of architecture. This thought evolved via a Facebook conversation with two Transparent Drawing followers. It had never occurred to me that the computer might turn...
TRANSPARENT CUBISM
Historians have divided Cubism into two segments. Analytic and Synthetic. Analytic Cubism happened at the beginning of the movement, including the years 1908-1912. The concepts of Analytic Cubism are central to Transparent Drawing. “It...
OPPENHEIMER
Have you ever stopped to think what spatial and form processing facilities you are born with? “Typology is a study of those relationships that do not have to do with measure and size, but...
DRAW LIKE A BYZANTINE
A new phrase, Draw Like a Byzantine, has crept into these pages without any warning. Let’s try to formalize the meaning of this phrase so as to bring it into our lexicon. To Draw...
ELIMINATE THE VANISHING POINT
You want to Draw Like a Byzantine? Eliminate the vanishing point. Have you ever thought about the cultural hegemony of the act of placing the vanishing point on your paper? There you are, drawing...
REAL WORLD TRANSPARENT DRAWING
I thought it would be fun to show a couple of real world Transparent Drawings. As long time readers know, I use Transparent Drawing on a daily basis in my office. I think transparently...
VANISHING POINT, A SHORT HISTORY
A few pages ago, we made clear that for the Byzantines, in the Middle Ages, the vanishing point was within the viewer. See The Vanishing Point Is Within You. If we look at art...
IMPROVISATION
If you look at a painting in a certain way, you can begin to see the space. At first blush, a look at this DeKooning painting, titled Gansevoort Street, you might think that it...
GOD’S VIEW
Does God see transparently? “Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity. The visible world is arranged for...
FORM GENERATION – AN EXAMPLE
Modernist paintings can be great form generators. Two months ago, we questioned why the iconic modernist painters were content to manipulate two dimensional forms on a two dimensional picture plane. See the page Modernist...
CAN’T IT BE ANYTHING BUT ART?
Nice drawing. You must be an artist. In the local paper, there was an article about a young person who does drawings of buildings in our Village. He does not do representational drawings, but...
MANUAL CRAFT
The analogue drawing, is a piece of manual craft. “…the drawing arts become manifest through manual craft – that they inherently posses a basis in artisanship- even when they allow us to see nonesistent...
QUOTIENT SUMMARY
This page provides a summary of the quotients that have been established so far in these pages. PROVENANCE QUOTIENT – This value quantifies the origins of our designs. The more original the provenance, the...
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